And Ms. N (the teacher next door) thought I needed an intervention...



Check out the stash this woman has accumulated. I feel like such an underachiever!

Exchange Experiences

I was part of get Stitchy!'s stitch marker swap a few months ago (blogged here and here). It was a great way to get my feet wet. I had lots of fun with it and a new hobby (designing stitch markers) was born. I'd never done any exchanging of anything on the Internet. After that positive experience, I felt I was ready for a bigger exchange. Baby steps, you know. I didn't want to do the whole Secret Pal thing. It intimidated me quite honestly.

A couple of months ago, I read somewhere about a stat counter for your blogs. I thought it would be cool to see from where my blog traffic comes. I had just submitted a couple of patterns to Knitting Pattern Central and Crochet Pattern Central. Those, plus a couple of others, were accepted. Most of my traffic was from KPC and CPC. From there, my patterns started showing up on all kinds of pattern resources on the Internet (including some Swedish one, I think.). One of the links to a pattern of mine was on a blog called The Spring Felted Bag Exchange. I emailed the blog author and thanked her for listing my pattern on her blog. She invited me to join. So I did.

I'm glad I did. This exchange only required two packages to be exchanged. I could handle that. I already blogged about the packages Sheilah sent (here and here). Here's a picture of the bag I sent my spoilee, Shawnee. She's a Mary Engelbreit collector. I had lots of fun making this bag. I might make more with other designs and appliques. I'm thinking a bag with an apple for the teacher would be cute. Opinions?





Well, now that I've gotten two exchanges under my belt, I've moved on to a third. It's a one-skein exchange over at Knit Knack on MySpace. I don't know what I'm going to make my spoilee there. When I do, of course, I'll post something here. So far, I have it possibly narrowed down to one of these yarns (purchased at Loopy Yarns at 70% off!!). Tell me what you think.




For the record, most of these yarns have been earmarked for winter gifts for my sisters and cousin.

Argh!!!

You signed up on June 14, 2007
You are #9115 on the list.
2570 people are ahead of you in line.
11035 people are behind you in line.
31% of the list has been invited so far

This is worse than waiting in line for concert tickets.

I Joined the Bandwagon

...and dyed some yarn with Kool-aid. Well, that and a couple of colors from some generic powdered drink mix I found at Dollar General. I tried to get fancy and dye two colors. I have some white spots in there. I suppose it adds character, a "design feature" as Sinnomen1977 over at get Stitchy! wrote. It wasn't difficult at all. I had fun. Sandra will have to come over so we can dye some more. Woo! Hoo! I think the next time I'll do some solid colors and maybe some handpainted with squeeze bottles and plastic wrap. We'll see. This is not the last time I'm gonna dye yarn.

Here are my dye jobs. The one on the left is the generic drink mix in cherry and lemonade. The one on the right is grape and pink lemonade Kool-aid.



Of course, now I have to find something small to make with this. Both cakes of yarn are leftovers from one skein of Paton's Classic Merino. Suggestions, anyone? Anyone?

My Spoilee's Bag

My spoilee's name is Shawnee. She's a Mary Englelbreit collector so I decided to make her a tote bag inspired by Mary Engelbreit. I took the basic bag pattern for the skull tote minus the skull. I added a black and white alternating border over a thin yellow line at the top of the bag and crocheted the cherry elements. The cherries, stems, and leaf were all crocheted. All in all, I have to say that I really enjoyed making this bag. I'm thinking about making myself one with a big apple on it.

My Cardigan

Actually, I modified the Anthropologie-inspired capelet from Craftster.org. I added some more stitches to my cast on, knit until the arms fit, added length to the sweater, length to the sleeves, and chose to wear it knit-side out instead of purl-side out. i used just over 4 balls of Noro Kureyon in colorway 159. It's difficult to take pics of yourself so I did the best I could. Here's my sweater!


I just love self-striping yarn.

Spring Felted Bag Exchange - part deux

Sheilah, you wonderful woman, you! Thanks for the loot. Sheilah is my spoiler. She sent me the most wonderful package this week. What a way to cap off my first big exchange project. To begin with, I had to wait an extra day for the package. It arrived on Thursday, but I missed the postal carrier. I think she just doesn't bother to knock on my door for me assuming I'm at work since I'm not here to receive packages during the school year. Grrr!

On Friday, I went to the post office to pick up Sheilah's package plus a couple of books I'd ordered (and the postal carrier didn't bother knocking on my door for this one either), and to send off Shawnee's package. I was Shawnee's spoiler. Once she receives her felted bag, I'll post pics of what I made her.

Let me tell you. Sheilah is one fine fiber friend. Check it out! Here's the bag she made for me.




And here are some bonus goodies from Sheilah.



The yarn at the bottom of the picture is store-bought: Paton's Devine and Yarn Bee's Soft Delight. The bright pink/purple blend is some laceweight merino. The brown yarn just below the bright, bright pink is a brown mohair that Sheilah dyed with the remaining dye from my bag. The other three are random wool yarns.

I have to admit. This exchange was fun. I may have to do others.

Just Under the Wire

I finished the Cigar gloves for E for my second XY-along project. Here they are. I finished them on Monday, June 25.





They were easier to make than I thought they would be. I used the magic loop method instead of wrestling with two circs or stabbing myself with DPNs.